“The Hour Has Come”

“The Hour Has Come”

Jeremiah 31:31-34        Psalm 51:1-12, 17-22    John 12:20-33

Year B, Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2024

Pastor Andy Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho

“You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” Words of the Psalmist, in Psalm 51:6. There is uncertainty in the flow, or energy of the first statement, You desire truth in the inward being. Words that resonate, like inward being, are hard to define, uncertain to our mind in how to read what’s intended with that meaning. To hear about my secret heart is an invitation to deeper awareness, a reminder that there is more going on in our soul than we may typically pay attention to, and it would be wise to wake up to this, to seek lessons from wisdom that only the heart can learn. But how do we perceive new things, from the heart? How do we develop new modes of perception to breach the limits of old patterns?

The people who first heard this morning’s scriptures had an initial shock that’s been lost to us. When we read God’s Word in Jeremiah, for example, that “The time is coming when God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, one that puts God’s law in their minds, one that’s written on their hearts”; we don’t have the same sense of surprise that they did. Most of the time we skim over it, and from this side of history we look back, plug in Jesus, and assume that Jeremiah’s prophecy is about Jesus. But in doing so, we miss the intensity of that specific situation in its own history and how amazing that news was to those people.

The Hebrew Scriptures mention the first covenant had been broken through disobedience of the people. God has no obligation to make a new covenant and indeed God is no longer bound to the Old Covenant. All God needs to do at this point is walk away and send the people out of the Promised Land. Exile is coming, they have been invaded, and they assume all is lost. So, for the people to hear about a new covenant, a different kind of covenant, that though Exile is happening, God is not abandoning them; this is not only inappropriate because they know they don’t deserve it, but also because they know God isn’t required to bail them out of their mess. God surprises the people.  God chooses “to make a new covenant” and this is a welcome surprise of salvation and hope in a very desperate situation, a critical time. As they were removed from the Promised Land, exiled, God went with them, known in their heart.

In our New Testament scene, Christ Jesus also faces popular beliefs that carry assumptions, yet Jesus issues something from God that goes beyond these expectations. People had an understanding that God’s anointed One would bring about drastic change, usher in a new kingdom that was unbeatable and established forever, and even Greek travelers want to see Jesus. This prompts Jesus to say, “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

I want to quote someone who talks about life as a covenant people, the Church. Here’s the quote: “The church was not called into existence to promote institutional survival. The church was called as a movement of faith to reach out to the nations, to teach and baptize, to share about God’s claim on this world and in the process invite people into transformational experiences where they stop living for themselves and start living for God. God’s New Covenant, sealed in Christ, is there to change us from the inside out. “Jesus, through the cross, ushers in a Kingdom that reigns in people hearts. Jesus never used a sword, never sat on an earthly throne, didn’t have a house, a church facility, or any building, and he never killed anyone to get his way. Yet, it’s his kingdom that knows no end. Jesus, the Son of Man, the unconquerable hero of God’s people, establishes a new covenant through the triumph, the conquest, of the cross. Jesus is a suffering servant.”

What an amazing quote! Yep, I quoted myself from my Fifth Sunday of Lent sermon first preached in 2012. Those words concluded that sermon, and I alluded to them three years ago as well. I’ve preached through the lectionary cycle several times as it repeats every three years. This morning’s verses, from Lectionary Year B, talk about a New Covenant in Jesus the Son of Man, but make no mistake, this is in terms of a suffering servant.

That’s usually news we don’t like to hear. A suffering servant saying,

Come, follow me. Lose your life to save it.

We prefer to hear about “success, we like prosperity, we like liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Especially for those raised western culture’s toxic masculinity that promotes rugged individualism, we don’t like to admit dependence or rely on others, let alone be a servant. Just read the bumper stickers that are so prevalent these days. In practice, we prefer to be in control, to have power, to be served, and get our way. Suffering is often seen as failure, weakness, a symptom that something went wrong rather than right.” (2012 sermon).

But remember, wisdom teaches us in our secret heart, and our inward being desires divine truth. Lives of saints and mystics show us suffering is transformative. Suffering teaches us things we would not have learned otherwise as God’s mystery goes to the depths of our soul. A suffering servant falls into grace, and like Jesus says, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Glory is an interesting word. Glory usually involves thoughts of strength, triumph, and victory. To die in glory often means giving your life in a war, like a valiant soldier fighting for a noble cause to the end. Maybe glory means being in your prime, the height of quality. Like a bride “in her glory” on her wedding day or a graduate receiving their credentials after years of hard work; glorious events are memorable, marking us somehow changed, and a larger good is promoted for the better.

Jesus, the Son of Man, is glorified. But it is in the context of teaching about a grain of wheat that dies for fruit to grow. This is how Jesus invites God to glorify God’s name. As Jesus fulfills his purpose, God is glorified. As Jesus lives into the fullness of his humanity, God is glorified. As Jesus is lifted up from the earth, all people are drawn to him, indeed, Christ draws all things into unity, and God is glorified.

Interesting to have Greeks come to Philip, and request to see Jesus. Thanks to Plato, seeing is equated with knowing. Greeks were known for their thoughts, for exploring ideas, and perhaps they represent our desire to see Jesus, but on our terms, with our ego fully intact. Losing our own sense of self is not, generally, what we have in mind. That grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying is symbolic of the importance of dying to the false self, so our True Self will emerge, the unfolding of our Larger Self, who we are in God.

Jesus is telling the Greeks that they cannot think their way into this, they cannot put Plato’s philosophy or mental concepts into the secret heart and suddenly live as enlightened beings.

The Greeks represent the larger culture, the world that’s been shaped since Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers that helped humanity grow into consciousness, into a sense of self as the individual emerges. We’ve inherited the world shaped by philosophy.

But Jesus reminds them, and us, of the limitations of just a single grain, that unless it falls, unless it falls into the earth, unless it falls into the earth and dies, it remains limited, isolated, stuck in a false perception, which is sin, the illusion of separation. He doesn’t only tell them, but Jesus uses his life to become the blueprint that shows us all the importance of learning to die before we die, to lose our life to save it.

This is more than an individual proposition, and civilization is at another critical time, faces more desperate situations. Philosophy has reached its limit and a new breakthrough is reaching toward us from the future, one that will shape the world and bring integration to that which is deficient and fragmented. A lived reality, time’s full intensity, claiming Presence in the present; God invites us to awareness as glory reveals anew.

“The New Covenant, which shapes God’s love through Christ within us, invites us to a new way of perceiving reality and awakening to Unity. By consenting to God’s Presence, in desiring God’s will, we affirm what has been true all along; that in Christ, right relationship is hardwired into our human experience, and for the many ways we deny that reality, intentionally or not, we are forgiven, cleansed, and called back to wholeness and blessing.” (Another of my sermons, Year B, Fifth Sunday of Lent, 2018).

Thanks be to God, the Glorious, Mystery into whom we fall. Thanks be to Christ, the suffering servant living in and as our life. Thanks be to the Spirit, enlivening all things with the breath of life, and teaching us in our inner being, our secret heart, God’s wisdom ways of knowing. May God create in us a clean heart, a new and steadfast spirit, restored joy, and a willingness to desire Mercy’s transformation. Thanks be to God, who is Love glorified, now, even as forever. Amen.